I’m a high school Junior who will be 17 this month. My parents are super conservative immigrants and while I fully respect their views it seems unreasonable to fulfill their expectation of completely cutting girls out of my life because I am too young. My parents recently caught me and my girlfriend together( just holding hands) and I am in huge trouble and am banned from talking to her again. My Indian parents have cultural beliefs that seem to depict romance as evil and tell me that involvement with my gf at such a young age would harm me academically and distract me from my goals. Both my girlfriend (ex?) and I are extremely driven students with high GPAs, ambitions etc, we have a pretty healthy relationship and really like each other but are not obsessed. I don’t want to disrespect my parents but I really like her so I don’t know what to do.
To the parents on this forum, what age did you think your children were ready for relationships?
It really doesn’t matter what other parents do. What matters is what your parents do. But I’ll tell you anyway!
We didn’t have any rules about dating because we didn’t need them. Neither kid was interested in going on a one-on-one date until about age 16. We trusted our kids, and they chose their friends well. My daughter had only one friend I didn’t trust, and my son’s friends were all drama nerds. My son didn’t date in high school, but my daughter did, and I knew the parents of her boyfriends, which really helped.
From a maturity standpoint, I don’t think kids really need to date in high school. You don’t need to have a dating relationship to learn how to be a good partner, and to discover what you want in a partner, after all. All you need is friends. But I do get that kids have the desire to date and that it is normal, so we didn’t discourage it.
Your parents are from a more conservative culture, so I doubt there’s anything an American parent could say to make them think differently, but I do suggest you ask them what it would take to let them let you date. Maybe ask for a trial run: if you can maintain your GPA, come home when you’re supposed to, and do whatever else is expected of you, would they consider letting you go out once a week with your GF?
And ask them how they came to be so concerned about dating at a young age. Maybe they have a family friend whose kid eloped, didn’t go to college, or got pregnant because of a dating relationship, and they want to spare you that. Often parents make rules based on fear, rather than on facts.
Any chance your parents want an arranged or quasi-arranged marriage for you?
Is your girlfriend Indian? If so, is she from the same caste or higher?
I live in NYC and my offspring knew several Indian kids from school and from ECs. They usually were not allowed to date–that was the default position. So, you are not alone.
In at least one case, the parents did plan an arranged marriage–though they didn’t let their kids know that until they reached the appropriate age. That was the real reason dating was not permitted.
Of course, arranged marriages are very different now than they used to be. You’re allowed a lot more time to get to know one another before you commit and it’s perfectly okay to say “no.” Still, parents believe it is important for their children to marry someone “suitable” and they are afraid that if you choose your own girlfriend, they won’t be able to interest you in match making.
My mother had no rules about that for me and my sister. I ended up having my first “boyfriend” when I was 11, and not again until I was 17. I agree with the above that dating is not necessary in high school, but I did appreciate my mother’s stance because it built a lot of trust between us. I do have trouble seeing 16 as “too young”, whatever that means, unless they also think you will still be “too young” when you turn 18 because you are probably not going to be so much more mature one year from now.
The house rule is 15 for group dates, 17 for solo dates. So far, it hasn’t been an issue because here very few kids actually solo date in high school.
My senior had her first boyfriend in 9th grade. She was 15. Lasted 8 months. Then a year of group dates. Then a boyfriend in her junior year who thankfully lasted about 5 months. More group dating. Now as a senior she has a new boyfriend since September. She and her friends do a combination of group dates and boyfriends. They hang out with friends but also go on dates…to dinner, movies, hiking, etc. I’d much rather have the dating in the open so we get to meet the boys. They hang out at our house and we can have ongoing conversations. My freshman daughter is not interested.
No rules. Started when I was 15.
Sorry you’re dealing with this 
“My parents recently caught me and my girlfriend together( just holding hands) and I am in huge trouble and am banned from talking to her again.”
What kind of trouble? What would happen if you ignored your parents’ wish?
We told our son that he could start dating at age 16. So far, he hasn’t been interested ( now a senior) and has mentioned that he would like to wait till College to start dating.
My son is 16 and I’m very surprised he’s not dating anybody yet. At this point my only rule would be no unprotected sex. I trust him not to get in trouble.
Do you parents have any American friends? Maybe they’re friendly with some of your friends’ parents? You can try to arrange a talk between them about this issue. Or if you’re not obsessed, maybe respect you parents’ wishes and wait until you really have to have a relationship and not because “everybody does it”. Or have a secret romance, that could be a lot of fun but can also have bad consequences (see Romeo and Juliet 
).
What is group dating? Like going out with a bunch of friends and one of them happens to be your bf/gf?
We told my daughter she could date at 16 but she went to an all-girls school and spent all her spare time doing gymnastics so she didn’t date until she graduated from high school. I’m kind of relieved she waited, to tell the truth. But I also feel like if we would have told her she had to wait until she was 18 or out of the house it would not have been wise.
Thanks for the advice/ stories guys.
@soontobecolleger yes or some version of that, often several couples go out together.
@doschicos My parents have just been very mad at me, originally I was severely reprimanded verbally but now they hardly talk to me for the last day or so. They confiscated my phone so I can’t talk/text her and as a byproduct anyone else. A more major consequence is that they want me to quit Science Olympiad since she is also a member of the team, they refuse to fund me for SciOly competitions due solely to this fact. An even more pressing problem is that my parents want to reach out to her parents and yell at them for letting their daughter date (as one can imagine this would extremely embarrassing).
group dating for my daughter’s friends is either going with a group and one of them is your boyfriend or going out with 2 or 3 girls and their boys friends. Like double dating but with 3 or 4 couples,
Not sure if ready, but my rule was 16. S had a gf prior to that, but there was no “real” dating, there was homework after school and school sports games at the high school. When he got his license at 16.5 they started going places just the two of them. D had her first bf at about 17.5 and they stayed together until the holidays of college freshman year. She hasn’t dated since but she’d like to.
So you guys haven’t actually been on a date, just held hands at school/scioly events?
My younger daughter waited for a very long time for her best friend to be allowed to date(he is also first generation but different ethnicity) and it never happened so she moved on. She’s still a bit sad about it.
My son dated a girl at 16 that broke his heart and got him in trouble at school. I don’t believe there has to be a certain age but strongly believe teen needs to be mature enough to deal with these type of feelings. I think boys get more attached than girls. My son is now a high school senior going out n having fun with friends but no GF.
I take it the girl isn’t Indian? Do your parents expect you to eventually marry within your culture/ethnicity? Arranged marriage?
Hopefully, some posters who are Indian will chime in with some advice based on cultural experience/knowledge. Although you are American, I pretty sure what we all do with our kids will be irrelevant to your parents. If it makes you feel better, I think they are overly strict. I also think not talking to you is childish and passive-aggressive. Sorry you have to deal with this.
The only advice I can offer is 18 months out. Go to a college not too close to home so you can live your life out from under your parents’ thumbs.
OP, I feel for you. I am not Indian, but my best friend and roommate in college was, so I saw first hand how her parents tried to foist their very traditional values on her. This was a very, very hard thing, and they often manipulated her with the silent treatment, hunger strikes, and threats to stop paying for school. As you might expect, she hid her white boyfriends and just became more distanced from them. I might suggest that you look to someone outside your family–but who is still Indian–who might be able to help you talk about this now. My fear is that if you don’t begin to deal with some of these cultural differences now, they will only become bigger later when you go off to college. For my friend, it was a crazy charade for years, with her flying across the country for arranged dates all the while having a secret boyfriend. Unfair for all concerned. Have them read Jhumpa Lahiri’s book, The Namesake. Her characters might be different ethnically, but the issues are the same. Don’t push too quickly, but do begin to nudge for your independence. It’ll be better in the long run for your relationship with them. It is perfectly reasonable for an American teen to hold hands with a girl, and if they can’t accept that, they are going to have a really hard time in the future. Also, be patient and try to empathize with them while still maintaining your own boundaries. Don’t talk to them in terms of “I want to have a girlfriend” but “I want to have a good relationship with you, my parents, and to do that, we are going to need to sort out how to deal with some of the big cultural difference issues in our lives.” I’m guessing you’ve seen Bend it Like Beckham, Mississippi Masala, and all the other Indian teen coming of age movies? If not, maybe find one you and your parents could watch together. I think there’s a film version of The Namesake too, but I haven’t seen it.
My ex husband is from North India, his family was extremely upset with him for marrying me. We have long since divorced. our daughter will have no restrictions on whom she dates…I don’t see her having any desire to date in high school though…but she could surprise me.
Wishing you the best of luck.